how would you rate the new operation encounters compared to EV and KP?

The difficulty we did on the PTS was "Story mode", either the instance is over tuned at the moment or Story mode has been tuned for what hard mode will be on live, I'm hoping that its the latter.

Part of me says that its definately the latter as Story mode drops Rakata gear. If we were to be killing it on hardmode, we'd have some of the new gear thus making the instance harder to balance as we would start to over gear it.

Compared to EV and KP, This is what raiding should be in SWTOR, its not a faceroll and is quite challenging, I can see a few guilds (especially on my server) possibly disbanding as they are struggling with HM KP/EV and will find this difficult.

Compared to EV and KP, This is what raiding should be in SWTOR, its not a faceroll and is quite challenging, I can see a few guilds (especially on my server) possibly disbanding as they are struggling with HM KP/EV and will find this difficult.

This was one of the things that I was very happy that they mentioned at the guild summit. I've been equally happy to find that they have actually followed through. T1 raiding was certainly a little basic and lacked the challenge. As I've said several times though, I was okay with this as it was their first attempt at raiding content.

My friends have been asking me to join them in SWTOR for 16 man operations and since 25 man raiding is on the decline in wow I am going to give this game a go. I am really happy to see that they balancing the operations better then the initial ones, which was holding me back from starting the 1st place.

what about the encounter design and the overall presentation and polish of the operation?

Ecounter design from what I've seen is a tough one to call, I could say the first fight is a basic tank and spank with a tank switch but its not and I don't want to go too far into describing the fight as I don't want to spoil it for people The second boss was definately easier and the third boss is a puzzle boss that I've yet to of seen.

---------- Post added 2012-03-26 at 02:28 PM ----------

Originally Posted by DreamCast

My friends have been asking me to join them in SWTOR for 16 man operations and since 25 man raiding is on the decline in wow I am going to give this game a go. I am really happy to see that they balancing the operations better then the initial ones, which was holding me back from starting the 1st place.

Ecounter design from what I've seen is a tough one to call, I could say the first fight is a basic tank and spank with a tank switch but its not and I don't want to go too far into describing the fight as I don't want to spoil it for people The second boss was definately easier and the third boss is a puzzle boss that I've yet to of seen.

---------- Post added 2012-03-26 at 02:28 PM ----------

16 Man nightmare at the moment is actually quite challenging

yes, I fail to see how Jarg and sorno 16 man nightmare is faceroll unless you get the bugged version (seen kills where the plan d doesn't happen) even with optimal gear and execution the one shot mechanic means it's usually a photo finish. The step up from 8 to 16 man nightmare is more than just having to find another 8 capable guys.

yes, I fail to see how Jarg and sorno 16 man nightmare is faceroll unless you get the bugged version (seen kills where the plan d doesn't happen) even with optimal gear and execution the one shot mechanic means it's usually a photo finish. The step up from 8 to 16 man nightmare is more than just having to find another 8 capable guys.

On 16-man nightmare, you get them both to 40%, then switch all dps to Jarg and kill him, then burn Sorno down through his enrage. The "one shot mechanic" is actually one shot from Jarg that brings the player to 50%, followed by one from Sorno a few seconds later than kills them (especially on light armor wearers). You can do it the normal way if players are observant and use their damage reductions/med packs after the first shot, or healers notice and shield them. But it's simpler to kill Jarg at 40%, then Sorno, since you're just having to over-heal the tank through the enrage.

But I do agree that 16-man nightmare is a challenge, even for a full-rakata group. I'm also glad that the new tier "story mode" will be comparable to HM mode ops. That means that the HM mode on the new tier will be a nice step up in difficulty.

I have a prediction and I'm calling this here and now. While I agree the raids should be more challenging, their will be many complaints and much gnashing of teeth about the raids being to hard now.

Yea that'll probably happen. I can see them tweaking the difficulty of story mode and to a lesser extent hard mode. But they should leave Nightmare to be, well a Nightmare. Don't even know how the encounters are going to be on Nightmare because they're holding that back to make it hard.

On 16-man nightmare, you get them both to 40%, then switch all dps to Jarg and kill him, then burn Sorno down through his enrage. The "one shot mechanic" is actually one shot from Jarg that brings the player to 50%, followed by one from Sorno a few seconds later than kills them (especially on light armor wearers). You can do it the normal way if players are observant and use their damage reductions/med packs after the first shot, or healers notice and shield them. But it's simpler to kill Jarg at 40%, then Sorno, since you're just having to over-heal the tank through the enrage.

But I do agree that 16-man nightmare is a challenge, even for a full-rakata group. I'm also glad that the new tier "story mode" will be comparable to HM mode ops. That means that the HM mode on the new tier will be a nice step up in difficulty.

erm thanks for the info although I've done it already. It's still a hard fight what ever tactic you use as if your unlucky enough for your healers to get nuked first as they did on one of our tries your simply screwed, and you have to be very quick on popping a self heal/cooldown although it hits our light dudes for as much as 24k so it seems a little overtuned. But then again 16 man fabricator was a breeze and was prompty one shotted on our first meeting so some balance between the encounters would be nice.
oh and fyi it's a missle from jarg that leves a debuff (that hit me for 9k) then sorno does a rail sot that hit me for around 13k, if you clense the debuff left by the missle it likely won't kill you, but it's too quick for most to manage.

I'm glad that difficulties have changed. Current content is an absolute joke.

10/10 Nightmare 16man. We clear both 'the infernal' and 'the unyielding' every Tuesday night and then we don't log on for a week. I hope that the fights aren't overtuned because I actually want a challenge.

As for Jarg and Sorno 16man NiM, yeah its annoying but the 1-shot gimped mechanic can be easily avoided with Bounty Hunters using Cure. We each will have a healer on focus and Cure ourselves or the healer. Last weeks kill we had ONE person die but thats because lagged out halfway through into Sorno's AoE.

Overall this game is too simple. Can't wait to do this content to see if Bioware has learned anything.

Edit: If you cure the debuff, you don't get hit by Sorno's attack. Voila. Mechanic negated.